


Binary

by jellybeanforest



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Brief Mentions of Starmora, Character Study, Child Abuse, Gamora-centric, GamoraWeek2019, Gen, Sexism, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellybeanforest/pseuds/jellybeanforest
Summary: All her life, Gamora has been forced to pick the lesser of two evils time and again.For Gamora Week Day 1 – Dreams/Survivor





	Binary

“When I grow up, I’m going to be the first doctor-architect-artist,” Gamora declares. She’s six years old and has limitless potential. She can become anything, be anybody she wants to be. “I am going to help people and build a big house for all my puppies with a giant garden for them to run and play and–”

“That’s stupid. Girls can’t become all of those things, or any of them,” Krimeri says, scrunching his face into a scowl as if he could smell Gamora’s dreams and found them foul. “You can become a mother or a priestess.”

Gamora shakes her head. “Nuh uh, Father says I can become anything I want.”

“Your father is a liar.”

She punches him then, knocking him down then following him to the ground to deliver more strikes. “You take it back!” she yells as she’s pulled off, struggling, by an adult.

Gamora is sent home to face her father after he had been informed of the fight _she_ instigated.

She knows she should apologize, but instead, Gamora resolutely stares down his knees, unable to face him in her (not-shame, never shame) sense that she had disappointed him somehow.

“You got into a fight today.” It’s not a question.

“…Yes,” she replies, truthfully, further explaining, “Krimmy called you a liar, said I couldn’t be a doctor-architect-artist because I’m a girl.”

“So you struck him.”

“So I struck him,” she repeats.

There’s a beat of silence as Father takes a step closer to her. She doesn’t move, stubbornly refusing to back down.

“Good.” He palms the top of her head between mussed pigtails, causing her to look up and see the pride in his eyes. “There is a time for diplomacy, and that was not it. Never let them define who you are or who you can be.”

In two months’ time, everything will change, but for now, she beams up at him, giggling and hugging him high up around his waist.

 

* * *

 

Gamora doesn’t become a doctor, an architect, or an artist, but she doesn’t become a mother or a priestess either. Instead, she becomes something far worse.

“Join me, Little One, and I will make you stronger than you can ever imagine,” her parents’ murderer tells her. Thanos is much taller than her, much taller than Father even, and his hands are so large with the strength to crush her head like an overripe melon in a vice if he so desired.

She cranes her neck up to meet his steady gaze, trying to ascertain his true objective. Father always said that bad men lie about their motives. Her vision blurs, and she wipes her tears on a dirty sleeve. “…I want my mother.”

Thanos exhales audibly, his limited patience growing thin. He crouches down to her level, pulling out a dagger. “You can either join your mother,” he says steadily, pointing the tip towards Gamora. “Or you can join me.” He flips the blade over to offer her the handle. “The choice is your’s.”

His eyes bore into her, deadly serious.

Gamora grasps the handle, and he lets go. She marvels at the weight of it – so heavy for something so small.

“Smart girl.”

 

* * *

 

Thanos hates liars, but he makes a liar out of Gamora every time she calls him ‘Father.’

He is not and will never be her father.

 

* * *

 

It’s been a year, and Gamora doesn’t cry anymore. She can’t afford to, not when she counts herself among the Children of Thanos. Such weakness is not tolerated.

Presently, she pinches her newest sister, a small Luphomoid Father recently ‘adopted,’ when she cries for her lost tribe. Nebula's tears won’t change anything, and she can see Thanos’s jaw tighten with annoyance every time her emotional resolve falters.

“Stop it,” she whispers close to her ear in the dark after hours. “Stop crying. You’re only making things worse for yourself. He’ll make you sorry if you keep it up.”

Nebula clings to her and trembles, but she stays silent.

Gamora remembers begging her parents for a sibling, preferably a little sister. She gets her wish in spades.

Corvus Glaive. Proxima Midnight. Cull Obsidian.

Nebula.

It costs her everything.

 

* * *

 

Gamora is Thanos’s favorite. Problem is she is also Nebula’s favorite as well. The Children of Thanos may be soldiers, but they are still children, and it’s only natural to have favorite siblings, but Nebula makes the mistake of letting Thanos know her’s.

After all, Thanos’ favor is motivating, while Nebula’s is threatening.

When they are both called to the Throne Room, the Other tosses them a pair of blunted practice swords.

Thanos addresses them: “Gamora. Nebula. You have both thrived under my tutelage. This is a test of your progress.” His words are hard, intimidating. “Do not fail me.”

Gamora hears the truth between his words.

_Fight or Die._

She retrieves a sword and slips into a fighting stance across from Nebula.

“We will not fail you, Father,” Nebula replies, mirroring Gamora. She springs forward, and her sister parries her strike.

 

* * *

 

After Nebula’s defeat, Thanos takes her arm.

Then an eye.

Then a leg.

Every battle lost is another body part lost.

Nebula must be deficient in some way, he tells her as he removes her cranial plate after the seventh defeat. If her sister lost just once, this would stop.

Gamora never loses.

So, piece by piece, he dismantles and replaces Nebula in the name of optimizing her fighting prowess, chipping away at her body and their sisterly bond until all that’s left of Nebula is a constant ache in her phantom joints and resentment.

 

* * *

 

“You were all I had, but you were the one who needed to win.”

 

* * *

 

“You will always be my sister.”

 

* * *

 

The stranger had approached Gamora on the field of battle and claimed familiarity. He had threatened to hold her, to constrain her in a cage of his arms and never let go. Though Nebula had warned her about this ‘Peter Quill,’ her response had been visceral, nearly a reflex, and now he lay wheezing on the ground.

He hadn’t even put up a fight.

“This is the one? Seriously?” Gamora asks Nebula. Had her taste in men degraded so much in the past (future) to the point where she somehow found this idiot an acceptable partner?

“The choices were him or a tree,” her sister confirms, as if pairing off with _anyone_ had been a compulsory component of team-building.

_Really?_

Gamora can hardly believe her alternate (future?) self would accept such a paucity of choice as inevitable, but what did she expect? Her life had always been a series of compromises, and it will always be like that so long as Gamora accepts her limitations as reality.

_Mother or Priestess-_

_Comply or Die-_

_Win or Lose-_

_This idiot or a literal tree-_

That last one, while not reflecting the highest of stakes, still confused her. _Why would she_ … But it is no matter. The pattern had held, repeated throughout her life. Two distasteful options – an impossible binary – and Gamora always stuck in the middle, making the least-disastrous decision for the sake of her survival.

Could there be a third choice? One Gamora creates for herself…

She’s carving a path through her former comrades when the soldier ahead of her stops his attack, and Gamora takes advantage of his momentary confusion to slice his head from his body, but he has already started to fade from the left across, disintegrating into ash. She whips her head around to see that it’s not just her late opponent, but Thanos and all his forces are similarly crumbling.

It’s over.

They won.

_Now what?_

She could join Nebula. This future version of her sister had saved her, sacrificing her past self in the act despite knowing her Nebula was capable of the same change and growth she had undergone. Though how long their tenuous peace could last given their tumultuous history is uncertain as it appeared that even this Nebula had failed to spend long periods of time with her Gamora despite their reclaimed sisterhood.

Or – _she internally cringes_ – she could return to this Quill person and rediscover what made her other self purportedly fall in love with the idiot, or…

Or…

Her temporary allies are distracted, a small contingent causing a commotion near where Thanos had perished, but many are staring at the whispers of ash floating into nothingness, still stunned by their sudden victory. Gamora crosses the battlefield, making a beeline for the closest intact M-ship from Thanos’s fleet and presses her palm to the access panel. Having only recently defected, her access has yet to be revoked, and the door accepts her biometric data, sweeping open. She settles into the cockpit and initiates the launch sequence.

Gamora doesn’t know where she’s going, but she’s resourceful, and for the first time, free of Thanos, free of the constrictions of her prior and future life, Gamora can become anything, be anybody she wants.

And who she wants to become is herself, if she can only find her out there in the great unknown.


End file.
